For the culinary expert or cooking enthusiast, there exist certain indispensable items. Whisks, spatulas and mixing bowls may spring to mind, but one often-overlooked yet invaluable kitchen item is the cast-iron skillet.

There was a time, before the proliferation of inexpensive Teflon and aluminum pans in the 1950s, when nearly everyone used cast-iron for cooking. This was because steel was expensive and a good set of cast-iron cookware could last a lifetime.Cast iron was also an ideal material because of its heat retention and diffusion properties, meaning that people cooking over gas ranges or fire could depend on even heat distribution over the pan’s cooking surface.

However, this also means you get “quite a different cooking experience” with cast iron, warned Loren Shuck, known as the Maine Pan Man. Shuck, who lives in Greene, has collected and cooked with cast-iron pans for years, amassing a collection of thousands of cast-iron pieces.

“Being from Down East Maine, growing up on a farm, we always used cast iron,” said Shuck. “I was brought up with it.” Later, Shuck began collecting cast-iron cookware, mainly for its aesthetic value. And he has spent years mastering the art of cast-iron cooking.

“The method of cooking with cast iron is that the pan has to be hot first. It’s big, it’s heavy, and it takes a while to get hot,” said Shuck. This is in contrast to most modern pans, he said, which get hot quickly but do not always evenly distribute heat over the entire surface, and cool down quickly when the heat source is removed.

This makes cast-iron cookware ideal for foods that need to be cooked with sustained heat or heat from multiple directions — think about a roast cooked in a Dutch oven or cornbread made in a deep skillet. Nonetheless, when you learn how to cook using sustained heat, most foods can be made using cast iron, according to Shuck. “You’re cooking from the bottom up, from the outsides, from all directions,” he said.

In fact, if you’ve got a well-seasoned pan, cast iron can be ideal for almost anything, from breads to burgers to scrambled eggs. Note: Shuck does not recommend using cast-iron cookware for stir-frying or other dishes in which different ingredients need different amounts of heat, since “you don’t get that sort of control” with cast iron.

With proper care and maintenance a good cast-iron pan will last a lifetime, said Shuck. He explained how he treats and cleans his cast iron:

Take your newly acquired pan and wash it “in hot soapy water,” using only “liquid soap, because soap in powder form is abrasive and will eat at the iron. Use an SOS pad and clean out the pan in circles, run it under hot water, dry it with a towel and put it on the stove top at low heat,” to evaporate any remaining water that will otherwise cause rust.

Next, according to Shuck, you want to cure your pan. This will create an oil seal over the cooking surface, which will make the pan non-stick and also protect against rusting. When it comes to curing, said Shuck, “everyone has their own ideas, but here’s my theory: I will take a piece of salt pork and rub it all over the inside of the pan when the pan is cold. It has a bit of a slimy texture, which will get left behind. Put the pan on a stove at low heat. When the residue starts to liquefy, take a paper towel and rub the liquid all around, then shut off the heat.”

“The first meal I’m going to cook in that pan is hamburger, bacon, something with a little grease,” he said.

Curing is really the first step in seasoning your cast iron, Shuck explained. Seasoning is the process by which your cookware, over time, acquires and retains slight flavoring from the things you cook on it. The beauty of cast iron, said Shuck, is that over time it develops a natural non-stick surface and a seasoning. In fact, he said, some people “have their pans seasoned different ways, so they have a pan for each ingredient.”

Cast iron is not meant to be washed in the same way as other cookware, Shuck said. Some people advise never washing cast iron, for fear of damaging the seal. Others, like Shuck, wash out their cookware as necessary — for example, after cooking something very greasy — with hot water and liquid soap, toweling it off after and warming it on the stove to evaporate any water.

Some people worry about bacteria with cast iron, said Shuck, because some owners don’t always wash it directly after use. However, he said, “if you get your pan red hot before you cook anything in it, there won’t be any bacteria.”

With almost anything cooked on cast iron, Shuck said, the idea is to get the cookware as hot as necessary before adding any ingredients. He gave an example using cornbread muffins.

“Put your oven on to 350, take a cast-iron popover pan, put it in and let it get hot. About five minutes before putting the mix in, spray the pan with Pam, then put it back in the oven.” It is not the heat from the oven, but the heat from the iron, that immediately begins cooking the muffins from every direction, he explained.

“There aren’t a lot of cast-iron pans made in this country” any more, said Shuck. He suggested that people look for Griswold or Wagner brand cookware, particularly pieces produced before the 1970s, when many manufacturers, he said, began making lower-quality products. In recent years, many celebrity chefs have begun their own cast-iron cookware lines, such as Martha Stewart and Rachael Ray.

Shuck warned that there are some health-related considerations to be made when cooking with cast iron. “Even with a sealed pan, you will get (a small amount of) iron from a cast-iron pan,” he said. So people with anemia may benefit from using cast iron, while those with hemochromatosis and other excess-iron issues may want to stay away from it. However, Shuck also advises people to investigate the health effects surrounding Teflon, which is currently being investigated by the FDA

Shuck also suggested testing any second-hand cookware for lead. “With a lot of these older pans, people melted down lead in them to make bullets or fishing weights,” he said. “Cast iron has pores,” he said, and even if the pan has been cleaned there will be residual lead on the surface. There are inexpensive kits to test for lead, or he suggested putting the pan in a 500-degree oven.

“Get the pan super hot,” and if there is lead “you’ll see clumps at the bottom of the pan.” If you are going to use the pan for cooking, said Shuck, you can “scrub down to the original metal with steel wool,” though it is probably best to get a pan that has never come in contact with lead.

Cast iron is a versatile cooking material that, once mastered, can be used to cook almost anything. While Shuck recommended several meals, including “the famous meal whenever you go to camp” of smothered onions in butter, on this page you’ll find his recipes for his secret cornbread, for kale stew and, for those more culinarily adventurous, something he calls Atlantic Puffin.

Recipes

The Pan Man’s secret recipe for cornbread

Cook’s note: Tastes even better when cooked in a wood-fired kitchen cook range.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 pound of pepper jack cheese

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Take a 9-inch cast-iron skillet and place it in the oven.

Melt butter in large skillet. Remove from heat and stir in sugar. Quickly add eggs and beat until well blended. Combine buttermilk with baking soda and stir into mixture in pan. Stir in cornmeal, flour and salt until well blended and few lumps remain.

Take pepper jack cheese and cut into quarter-inch cubes. Mix it with the rest of the ingredients.

Remove 9-inch cast-iron skillet from oven and spray with Pam. Put skillet back in oven for 5 minutes. Note: You can also use any cast-iron pan or muffin pan to do this. The 9-inch pan is the cook’s favorite.

Remove pan and add ingredients quickly.

Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The bread should have a golden brown top.

Cast Iron Kale Stew

2 tablespoons olive oil

16 ounces chourico (Portuguese) sausage or kielbasa, sliced thin

1 yellow onion chopped

1 cup chopped fennel bulb

4 minced garlic cloves

1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

10 cups chicken broth

4 cups chopped kale leaves

A 15-ounce can of cannellini beans: rinsed and drained

1 package of cheese tortellini

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

In a #8 or #9 cast-iron Dutch oven, heat the olive oil on medium heat. When warm, place in the chourico or kielbasa and brown the medallions on both sides. Once brown, add in onions, fennel, garlic, thyme and red pepper. Saute the contents of the pan until veggies are soft (about 12 minutes). Add the broth and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add the kale and the beans and reduce heat to a simmer until kale is wilted. Once kale is wilted, add the tortellini and simmer until they are cooked. Add parmesan cheese to taste. Stir. Serve. Enjoy!

Old Time Atlantic Puffin

Note: Loren Shuck got this recipe from an old mountain man in Washington County when he was a kid.

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon cracked black pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup white vinegar

1/4 cup Brennevin liquor (substitute 1/4 cup zesty Italian salad dressing if no Brennevin)

5 crushed juniper berries

4 half chicken breasts or 6 chicken thighs (puffins cannot be hunted any longer)

6 fresh sprigs of rosemary

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees. Combine the first six ingredients on the list in a large mixing bowl. (Smell should be repulsive.) Take knife and carefully lance the breasts lengthwise through the center or follow the bone with the thighs. Once a clear path has been cut through center of the meat, drive a sprig of rosemary down through each hole. Place meat impaled with rosemary in the mixing bowl and knead the meat into the mix. Let sit in cool place for 15 minutes. Place meat and marinade in greased cast-iron deep skillet and place in oven for 35 minutes and continue to cook until meat shows no blood color. (Time is longer for thighs.) Heat may be reduced if meat browns too quickly in oven. Remove from oven and serve with wild rice. Rosemary can be pulled out by the individual diner.